Support Your Social Media Strategy with these 5 Plugins for WordPress Feb, 18, 2013 Reagan Judd

What is an easy way to help support your social media strategy? Plugins for social media. These can be an excellent addition to any WordPress website. With the right plugins, visitors can share content, sign up for notifications and create bookmarks. Why is this so important? Consider this fact: One out of every seven minutes people spend online is spent on Facebook. On top of that, every day 340 million tweets are sent out into the World Wide Web. This is a huge marketing venue, and one that you can easily tap into by providing quality content marketing that is easy for your readers to share.

These social media plugins are some that work well with WordPress, are simple to install and have given many people excellent results.

1. ShareThis
With ShareThis, you can choose which social media websites you want to target. Visitors to your website can share your content and/or vote for you using this plugin. ShareThis also provides tracking reports, and it allows you to customize the colors of the plugin to match your site. This plugin is ideal for users who want to encourage sharing and track reader activity. Its current rating from WordPress users is 3.3 out of 5.

2. Sociable
If you have trouble promoting the content on your site, you can let readers do it for you by installing Sociable. Sociable is one of the most widely-used plugins available for use on WordPress. This plugin allows you to place buttons to the social bookmarking sites of your choice directly on your website. Visitors can then click on these buttons to vote for you and promote your content. Sociable’s current rating is 4.1 out of 5 stars.

3. JetPackJetPack is one of the most versatile plugins available for your WordPress site. JetPack allows you to integrate your content with your social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Tumblr. JetPack also allows users to share your content on social networks and via email. For users who don’t want to post the same content to multiple social media platforms, JetPack is the perfect solution. Its current rating is 3.8 out of 5 stars.

4. Shareaholic
A slightly different plugin, Shareaholic includes a social bookmarking menu, share buttons for social media platforms and a button that allows users to share content via email. The share buttons included with Shareaholic are designed to intrigue users, rather than distract them from your main content. If your page is already busy or cluttered, this plugin is ideal. Its current rating is 4 out of 5 stars.

5. Tweetily
Most content marketers are busy people, and you simply do not have the time to stay on Twitter all day long sending your posts. Yet, you need to maintain a presence throughout the day to drive traffic to your site effectively. Tweetily is the answer to this quandary. It will randomly select a post or page on your WordPress site to tweet automatically. You simply set the times, number of tweets and type of content you wish to share. The plugin has a 4.6 out of 5 star rating.

People are spending a lot of time online, and they are spending it on social media sites. These sites provide the venue for content to be shared today, and you need to make it easy for your readers to share your content through their favorite sites. This list of plugins is intended to be a resource of tools you can include in your next social media strategy. As you use them, remember to make sure your social media plugins are properly setup and configured.